Tim GideonTDK 3 Speaker BoomboxThere's no denying the massive TDK 3 Speaker Boombox looks good&mdash;and it often sounds very good, too&mdash;but it isn't without issues, and at 26 pounds, it's not all that portable.

Visually striking design. Serious bass at high volumes. Can be used as an amp for instruments. AM/FM radio. It goes to 11 (really).

Cons

Distortion issues at random volumes. Portable, but only if you want to haul 26 pounds and feed the Boombox 12 (!) D batteries.

Bottom Line

There's no denying the massive TDK 3 Speaker Boombox looks good—and it often sounds very good, too—but it isn't without issues, and at 26 pounds, it's not all that portable.

TDK hasn't been in the picture much lately, but it's trying to make a splash in the iPod speaker dock scene with the massive, $499.95 (list) 3 Speaker Boombox. Strictly speaking, it isn't an iPod dock, but it comes closethere's no built-in docking area, but uses a 30-pin connector cable to hook up an iPod. While it delivers deep bass and high volumes, the 2.1 system (the subwoofer is built-in and centered on the front panel) suffers from design and functionality issues that highlight the veteran company's rookie status in the iPod speaker arena.

Design

At first glance, the visual design of the 15.5 by 24.3 by 5.3 (HWD) speaker seems to be its greatest strength. Not only is it massive and visually striking, but it actually has a volume knob that goes to 11. (If you don't get that reference, we'll wait while you Google it.) The three 5.5-inch driverstwo full range drivers and one subwoofer located between themare uncovered and pump with the beat at even moderate volumes. Padded brown faux leather lines the bottom of the handle on the top panel, but besides that and some minor gold and chrome flourishes on the knobs and speaker cone edges, the speaker is black. A side panel houses the necessary connections: a USB input for iPods (a 30-pin cable is included) and hard drives, a ¼-inch instrument input (yes, you can rock out on your guitar through this speaker system), a 3.5mm line input, and a stereo RCA input for components. Two small displays show basic input information and an animated graphic depiction of 7 frequency bands as music plays. Your choices for music sources are FM, AM, USB (this is the iPod connection), Aux, and Instrument.

It's a good-looking device, but TDK seems to have missed out on some basic features other speaker systems today have by default. First, having to connect an iPod via cable instead of a built-in dock is annoying, but at least the input pulls audio from the 30-pin connector via USB and not through the headphone jack. The display on the left-hand side of the front panel switches between a rather low-fi "TDK" logo and the phrase "Life on Record." It would have been better used to display useful information. We already have a TDK logo emblazoned on the bottom of the front panel; how about song information, or anything other than a company slogan? Unfortunately, track info, and playback controlsare not included on the display when you use an iPod. If you connect a hard drive, they magically appear, but I suspect the majority of users will have iPods instead. There is no remote control, and no Bluetooth streaming, so you have to use your wire-connected iPod's internal playback controls. In other words, the cool look of the device isn't the only thing that feels retro about the 3 Speaker Boomboxits feature set is from another era.

Then there's the issue of portability. This thing weighs 26.3 pounds. That's without the twelve not-included D batteries required to power it in a portable scenario (which bumps that weight up to 30.1 pounds). It's pretty clear that this is a stationary speaker system for all but the most die-hard owners. If you want some more reasonable portability, but don't want to give up the powerful sound, consider the incrementally smaller Harman Kardon Go + Play Micro ($299, 4 stars).

Performance

Much can be forgiven in the land of forgotten features if the audio performance is excellent. TDK managed to provide both great moments and some ugly ones; in our audio performance tests.
Two things are for sure: the 3 Speaker Boombox can get really loud, and its built-in subwoofer handles bass exceptionally well. Oddly enough, at moderate volumes, we noticed occasional distortion. It didn't sound like the drivers in the speakers warpingit almost sounded like digital distortion from the iPod's output to the Boombox's input. We swapped out different iPods to make sure it wasn't an iPod defect, and it wasn't. Even more oddly, the issue was intermittent. Sometimes it would happen on one Radiohead song, sometimes not on the same track. While the low-volume distortion was subtle, it bothered me when I heard it.

Classical music sounded beautiful on the Boombbox's EQ-adjustable speakersfor what it's worth, I recommend leaving the EQ flat. With no boosted or cut EQ, John Adams' "The Chairman Dances" was conveyed with a full rangenot overly bright on the higher strings, not too boomy on the lower strings and intense percussion. As for popular music, at higher volumes, the distortion never occurred and the Boombox sounded powerful, crisp, and strong in the low frequency department. Indeed, The Knife's "Silent Shout" did not distort at all at very high volumesso high that walls were rattling in the labs. In other words, the strange distortion issue described does not effect actual speaker performanceit is an issue with some internal digital processing, it would seem, and not constant, nor even present at moderate-to-high volume levels.

The built-in AM/FM radio offers fine reception with no need for an external antenna. It's easy to program the memory presets: you just hold your finger over the illuminated touch-sensitive numbers that appear on the front face when the Boombox is in radio mode (there are five presets for each band). Less intuitive is switching between Manual and Seek Tuningit involves the right-hand dial and the OK button, but the screen's simplistic graphics make the two-choice process confusing. Station and artist info will stream across the left-hand display when available.

Issues
One thing I found annoying: the Power/Volume knob mutes the system without powering it down when you turn it all the way left, just before it is in the Off position. It would have been just as easy to make the knob smoothly fade into silence, but instead, it abruptly switches off when there is plenty of room left for quieter listening. What's more: hovering around the point at which the knob mutes can cause static interference with whatever you're listening to, like the sound you get in earphones when they're not plugged in to a device all the way but music is still playing.

Another design issue is good for the environment, but clumsily implemented: if you pause your iPod for long enough, the Boombox shuts off. Pressing play on the iPod, however, does not awaken your system immediately, since it completely powers down. Instead, you have to power up the Boombox againabout a 5 second process. It's not just the wait that's annoying, it's the fact that if you pause your iPod for a few minutes and then press play again, the iPod will play but you will hear nothing, losing your place in whatever you were listening to.

For the price, the TDK 3 Way Boombox definitely delivers on the power front. Audio is crisp and clearexcept for that strange low volume, random distortion issue. While I happen to think it looks cool, it's silly to think that it is easily portable when it weighs so much and takes up so much space. If you're looking for a strong portable iPod speaker dock, consider the aforementioned Harman Kardon Go + Play Microeven if you couldn't care less about portability but the Boombox's price is too high, the Micro is a solid option. And if audio performance is your main priority and this price range is a tad steep, check out our Editors' Choice for iPod docks, the Beatbox by Dr. Dre from Monster ($349.95, 4 stars). The TDK 3 Speaker Boombox is no slouch, but it's not for everyone.

TDK 3 Speaker Boombox

TDK 3 Speaker Boombox

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